Various types of videoconferencing rooms are known in the art. As videoconferencing technology becomes more sophisticated, it is often more cost-effective to reserve a public videoconferencing room than to build a private, state-of-the-art videoconferencing room. Therefore, publicly available videoconferencing rooms having sophisticated technology are becoming popular among businesses and individuals that require the occasional use of a videoconferencing room, but do not want to furnish a private videoconferencing room with sophisticated technology.
In general, public videoconferencing rooms require a room attendant to make reservations and allow those with reservations (i.e., patrons) access to the videoconferencing room. The room attendant schedules the patron to use the videoconferencing room at a room access time, grants the patron access the videoconferencing room at the room access time, collects deposits and payments from the patron, and enables the electronic equipment in the videoconferencing room. In other words, the functionality of public videoconferencing rooms is essentially disabled without an attendant and access is limited to hours of operation when a room attendant is present. Accordingly, the embodiments described hereinafter were developed in light of these and other drawbacks associated with known systems and methods for accessing videoconferencing rooms.